Editorial: Win some, lose some

Had they ex­er­cised their elect­or­al strength to the fullest ex­tent, North­east Phil­adelphia voters could have sent an un­pre­ced­en­ted five of their own to City Coun­cil in last week’s gen­er­al elec­tion. In­stead, in this “change” elec­tion, voters took two steps for­ward and two steps back.

Even a tid­al wave of sup­port for lackluster Re­pub­lic­an may­or­al chal­lenger Kar­en Brown wouldn’t have been enough to push her ahead of Mi­chael “A New Day, A New Way” Nut­ter for the top spot, but the North­east could have done bet­ter in the con­test for Coun­cil at-large seats.

Denny O’Bri­en, the pop­u­lar state law­maker from Mill­brook who long has dared to think for him­self and not for Phil­adelphia’s sorry ex­cuse for a Re­pub­lic­an “op­pos­i­tion” party, sur­prised nobody by win­ning one of the two at-large seats “re­served” for the minor­ity party.

Still, North­east voters should have gone to the polls in lar­ger num­bers — 50 per­cent of re­gistered voters would have been nice — to vote for Al Tauben­ber­ger and Joe Mc­Col­gan, the oth­er North­east res­id­ents run­ning for at-large seats. Had they done so, all three men could have been elec­ted. Had voter par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Great North­east been as great as it should be, NE Re­pub­lic­ans could’ve cap­tured a third at-large seat for the first time ever. You can bet May­or Nut­ter would pay more at­ten­tion to the North­east.

Dav­id Oh, the law­yer from South­w­est Phil­adelphia who nar­rowly beat Mr. Tauben­ber­ger for the second GOP at-large seat, hope­fully will team up with Mr. O’Bri­en, 6th dis­trict Demo­crat Bobby Hen­on and 10th dis­trict vet­er­an Bri­an O’Neill — who con­sist­ently votes the right way — to show North­east Philly that it really does count. ••